Slashdot Mirror
War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production
Freshly Exhumed writes "Its doubtful you know the name of Einar Skinnarland, but his sabotage over several years repeatedly thwarted Nazi plans to exploit Norway's heavy water production capabilities for their atomic bomb research plans. Skinnerland recently passed away in Canada and his daring exploits are recounted here. Details of some of the raids on the production facilities can be found on pafko and Stephen's Study Room. So many 'what if?'s and suspicions have swirled around the Nazi atomic bomb program that this man's efforts seem crystal clear for a change."
"Hemos mentioned Nazis in the subject line. Therefore, by the Godwin's Law rule, the discussion is over almost before it's started."
Think again. The Godwin's Law FAQ, section II.2, discusses this.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb shows clearly and ironically that Hitler drove many Jewish physicists out of Germany in the '30s including Einstein. If he would have let them keep there posts he almost certainly would have had the bomb before the US.
Free cell phone tracking
What matters is that eventually, the cursed thing was used. Go ahead and say it was to save x number of troops or y politcal plans, or anything else, but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
The japanese decided it was a bad idea to persue the atomic bomb (heavily) because of the shortage of deuterium. The germans and the french had the nice little plant, Norsk Hydro in Norway, to make enough of the stuff to have a burgeoning atomic program, fortunately there was enough sabotage that Hitler didn't get the bomb. Especially since he already had an excellent delivery system.
Maybe it matters a slight amount that the thing was used by a democratic nation to end a dreadful war launched against them rather than by the Nazis to achieve world domination in a war of their own making?
Ah, yes.. WW2.. nobody had the bomb, nobody had real technological advantages and the enemy was in fact a civilized western high tech country with lots of resources. Those were the times!
It's a pity todays so called "wars" are more like playing starcraft with unlimited resources against an AI set on "easy". I don't think I'll watch the Iraq thing on TV when it starts. A few old star trek episodes will provide better entertainment.
Somebody think of a Microsoft angle to this story!
Mr. Skinnarland was mentioned several times in Leo Marks book "Between Silk and Cyanide". One of the many heroes just recently getting their due.
He trained in England with the SOE, crossing paths with Mr Marks who trained operatives in the use of codes.
Marks died in the last year or two also.
http://www.pafko.com/trips/norway/n10/ - about the sabotage
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/heavy.htm - about heavy water and it's use
http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/haukelid.htm - about Knut Haukelid; another of the heroes from Telemark
http://www.390th.org/warstories/Rjukan.htm - about how the USAF tried and failed to knock out the heavy water plant
I know, I gotta learn proper html
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
So you are acting a-la US acts when Russian hacker gets tried in US soil for un-crime commited in Russia?
You must be really naive if you think Diplomatic talks degenerate because of bad manners at the tea table.
The cards are always down, it's all about how much one is willing to bend over and grab their ankles.
And the US lately, has become the master pimp of the world... expecting anyone and everyone in their sight to bend over and grab em.
Well fuck you! It's about time you realized it doesn't work that way... You have a current world crisis going on just because of said behaviour. Just sit and watch how the US will go in like the First of the Ninth Air Cav even after the UN says "no". The world isn't your playground...
Like I said before, it's one thing to think you're right in an argument, and something else completely to try and justify glaring events of 50 years past.
"As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!
If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.
" What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."
I disagree, for the reasons stated above.
If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.
"And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."
The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.
"The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"
What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.
"Read up on some history..."
Hypocrite.
Heavy water is D2O, D being deuterium, or an isotope of hydrogen that has 1 extra neutron. Heavy water is used as a moderator in the breeder reactors that convert/purify barely-fissionable U-235 into U-238. The only other material that can act as an appropriate moderator is super-pure graphite, but the Nazi's found heavy water easier to produce, so they used that.
The only other alternative is to not use a breeder reactor, but instead to try and extract the U-238 directly from the uranium ore (in which it is present in VERY low concentrations). However, this approach requires enourmes complexes, noxious chemicals, and complicated pressure systems. This is a much more expensive method, but technically simpler if you haven't yet discovered how to build an effective breeder reactor. This was also the method used by the americans to build their first bombs.
Not strictly true. The Nazis had a significant nuclear-weapons research program, using the intellectual powers of such notable physicists as Werner Heisenberg (of "Uncertainty Principle" fame). However, they were convinced that an exploding nuclear bomb was impractical, because Dr. Heisenberg had grossly mis-estimated the critical mass of uranium. Because of this, the most likely form of Nazi nuclear weapon was a subcritcal reactor-bomb which would "detonate" through a mechanism more like the Chornobyl meltdown than a runaway complete fission reaction.
That said, the commando raids on the various plants supporting this reasearch definitely helped guarantee that Nazi Germany never attained nuclear weapons. We can be fairly grateful for that, I think.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...
"Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.
" And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"
On US territory.
"if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."
Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.
"Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."
They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.
"That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"
You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.
Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.
"Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"
The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.
Your metaphor is strenuous at best.
Bombing a dam is damn hard. seen from the air they are very small targets. And they are concrete and over built. even if you hit the top you have not done much damage. to destroy the dam you have to hit is near the bottom where the water pressure is high. hence the need for a raid on the ground: to hard to hit.
Enter the skip bomb. the Skip bomb is a spinning cyllindric bomb dropped in the water above the dam. it skips, skips, skips and slams in to wall of the dam. but it does not explode. instead the back spin makes it claw its way down the side the dam where it detonates near the bottom.
there's lots on the web on this, including . http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazidams/
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The ferry incident was merely an extension of this first effort. The ferry was carrying parts from the reactor and the remaining supply of heavy water back to germany to be used in further atomic research. He blew it up to stop that, and he was greatly saddened by the fact that there were several norweigans on board at the time.
As well, Norway wasn't neutral, it was occupied by germany and as such was part of the Nazi war effort.
The UK one The Heroes of Telemark, and a much less known one, because it was norwegian. I can't even manage to find the name of the norwegian one, though I've seen it. The latter is a real documentary, and while it may not have the same suspense, it is much more true to the real story. If that's of interest, of course...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The Germans weren't even close to making the bomb so the raid on the Norsk Hydroelectric plant and other destruction of heavy water didn't really make a difference.
First, heavy water is not the only moderator available to someone who wants to make a chain reaction (the first US pile used very pure carbon) and heavy water isn't used in an atomic weapon (although it is used in a thermonuclear weapon but you have to crawl before you can run.)
Second, the Germans didn't even have the explosive material to make a bomb. In an atomic bomb you can use either plutonium or enriched uranium. The Manhattan Project got it's plutonium from the residue of a self-sustaining chain reaction and the Germans hadn't even completed a self-sustaining chain reaction by the war's end, hell they weren't even close. Heisenberg kept insisting on creating these elaborate designs of natural uranium for the pile such as concentric spheres or huge disks which took a lot of time and labor to produce when the best configuration for a chain reaction is small cyclinders which was the only configuration the Manhattan Project ever used. Using enriched uranium was just out of the question for the overworked German war machine. America had the money and resources to build gaseous diffusion plants and centrifuges, but what with fighting two fronts Germany had better things to do with its money and Heisenberg was not really pushing for more resources since he couldn't convince himself let alone Hitler that they would be able to produce a bomb.
And then had they somehow had a chain reaction they would have to extract the plutonium (not easy), then they still have to construct the bomb (not easy), and figure out a way of delivering it (not easy.) For more information I highly recommend the Richard Rhodes book, Making of the Atomic Bomb.
I have seen the Nazi heavy water artifacts. (and other artifacts) For many years in the 1980's the University of Michigan had ampules of heavy water (double ended sealed glass vials) on display in the old chemistry building in central quad area on main floor toward the east. Lots of universities have interesting artifacts in display cases, including the worlds smallest MOVINGmotor at caltech and other exibits.
The nazi heavy water display was fascinating because the vial had pretty high quality white stickers with red swastika prominently on them. The display would not have been complete without the sticker obviously.
The german heavy water exhibit looked cool.
At that time the Univ of Michigan harbored Dr Mengeles lab book results (and luftwaffe freezing of human spine in artic temp brine, and decompression tests on humans) and was in the flack.
I noticed hundreds of rare Nazi books being stolen or defaced one by one from the MASSIVE collection (yes massive) grad student library at the Univ of Michigan . The book that I thought was the most fascinating was a german book of all uniforms for a particular year... I was shocked by the futuristic and overly high-tech look of the White winter SS officers uniform (formal version?). It looked like it hopped out of a start trek movie. It was a small book, but it too was stolen or removed many years later when I tried to take a glance at it and perhaps color photocopy it to prove to people how futuristic and out of place that uniform looked. All the books were in german , row upon row, and I did not know a word of german.
The librayy entrance of the library had a display on vigilante vandalism... jews and arabs were detroying each others books each week and leaving destoyed volumes (sometimes with graffitti) in the building itslef, but sometimes stealing them. I asked them why the religious zealots were desroying each others "indfidel books" and they told me THAT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ATHIEST BOOKS BY CHRISTIANS. I replied "huh?"and they said, that christians steal, or check out and "lose" all the most provocative athiest books and that they REFUSE TO RESTOCK and REORDER THEM. They had so few it was an easy targert goal to work on I assume, as opposed to the muslim and jewiosh works.
I then asked a country librarian about censorship destruction of books by religious nuts, especially books in athiesm and they concurred that it is common.
Lots of closed minded people despise Germans and their Nazi era-engineering, as much as despise books on athiesm. People should learn from the past. Not celebrate acts ofsabotage for sabotage's sack. Trusted patrons in a Library, and trusted workers at a hydroelectric plant that extracts heavy water, should not be celebrated for treachery and sabotage. It is a form of dishonesty. And truly just people hate dishonesty
Reposted because the first one got modded -1 by an idiot.
Here, basically the German's had abandoned the idea of a "nuclear bomb" because they belived that the amount of uranium required for a critical mass would require something on the order of a giant barge to deliver, making it impractical as a weapon. Here is information on Hiesenberg's reaction to hearing of the Allied nuke.